Price Lab Podcast: Recent Episodes
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Welcome to the Price Lab Podcast, a series focused on the people who are building, using, and critiquing the digital tools and techniques transforming the humanities. In each episode, friends of the Price Lab will speak to a different scholar about their work and the digital tools and resources shaping their research and pedagogy.
In this episode, Price Lab Managing Director, Stewart Varner, talks to Joel Lee about his time at Penn navigating the spaces between his two majors–English and Computer Science, the impact a Digital Humanities class had on his time at Penn as well as his current job, and other humanities projects he’s worked on.
This episode was edited by Steven Perez.
Intro Music by Steven Perez.
In this episode, Price Lab Managing Director, Stewart Varner, talks to Malkia Okech about her time at Penn, working with the Penn & Slavery Project, and other public humanities projects she's worked on post-graduation. Malkia Okech was the first student to complete the minor in Digital Humanities at Penn.
This episode was edited by Steven Perez.
Intro Music by Steven Perez.
This special episode of the Price Lab Podcast is dedicated to our colleague and friend Scott Enderle who died on September 11, 2021. Scott was one of the DH Specialists associated with the Price Lab and a leading thinker and innovator in quantitative literary analysis. More importantly, he was simply one of the best people most of us knew. This episode combines some found audio of Scott talking about his work with thoughts and reflections from some of the people with whom he worked closely.
Content Warning: This episode is very different from the others. It is quite sad at times and it deals with the death of a beloved member of our community, Scott Enderle. We were so lucky to get to work with Scott everyday at Penn but his presence loomed large in digital humanities and he had friends, fans, and collaborators all over the world. We're making this episode available for everyone but especially for those who knew and admired Scott.
Managing Director of the Price Lab, Stewart Varner, welcomes Jessica Marie Johnson (Assistant Professor of History, Johns Hopkins University) to talk about her work as a Historian and Black Studies scholar. In this episode, Johnson discusses her commitment to black feminist thought, the need for scholars to stay aware of how the general public discusses histories of slavery and ideas about enslaved people on social media, and the ways in which Black Studies has long been interested in harnessing data for social justice.
Johnson is the author of Wicked Flesh: Black Women, Intimacy, and Freedom in the Atlantic World (University of Pennsylvania Press, August 2020). She is guest editor of Slavery in the Machine, a special issue of sx:archipelagos (2019), and co-editor with Dr. Mark Anthony Neal (Duke University) of Black Code: A Special Issue of the Black Scholar (2017).
For more information: jmjohnso.squarespace.com/
Unless otherwise noted, the music used in this episode was sourced from royalty-free music libraries. The artist featured is Blue Dot Sessions.
Intro Music: "Prisoner of Mars" by Stereo Lab
Founding faculty director of the Price Lab for Digital Humanities, Dr. Jim English (John Welsh Centennial Professor of English, University of Pennsylvania) joined us to discuss the creation of the Price Lab and his forays into incorporating digital humanities tools and methods into his own research and pedagogy. A specialist in modern and contemporary British fiction, his essays have appeared in PMLA, The New York Times, The Atlantic, Harpers, and the Los Angeles Review of Books.
Unless otherwise noted, the music used in this episode was sourced from royalty-free music libraries. The artists featured are Chris Zabriskie, and Blue Dot Sessions.
Intro Music: "Prisoner of Mars" by Stereolab
In this episode, we are joined by Price Lab's Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow (2018-2020), Julie Beth Napolin. In collaboration with former Mellon Graduate Fellow (2018-2019), Orchid Tierney, Napolin narrates the story of her work as a sound scholar, radio journalist, and digital humanist. She discusses the power of oral history, biases built into audio technology, and the importance of investigating how we hear and listen and who is the "we" who is doing the hearing and listening.
Her book, The Fact of Resonance is forthcoming in June 2020 with Fordham University Press.
For more information: juliebethnapolin.com
Unless otherwise noted, the music used in this episode was sourced from royalty-free music libraries. The artist featured is Blue Dot Sessions.
Music:
Stereo Lab - Prisoner of Mars
Raymond Scott - Unknown
Yo La Tengo- Green Arrow
Sound Excerpts:
William Faulkner- That Evening Sun, read by Arliss Howard
Mr. Microphone Commercial from 1981
Testimony of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford in front of Senate Judiciary Committee
In this episode, not one, but two former Price Lab Fellows team up to talk about digital humanities! Price Lab Research Fellow, Emily Hammer (Assistant Professor of Digital Humanities, Archaeology and Anthropology of the Ancient World in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations), spoke with Price Lab Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow Lisa Poggiali about the ways digital tools have informed Lisa's anthropological research in Eastern Africa. They also discuss how Lisa combined digital mapmaking and social justice in her pedagogical work.
This episode was produced and edited by Price Lab for Digital Humanities' Student Worker, Maria Kiamesso DaSilva.
Unless otherwise noted, the music used in this episode was sourced from royalty-free music libraries. The artist featured is Blue Dot Sessions.
Intro Music: "Prisoner of Mars" by Stereolab
"Xaleyi" by Youssoupha Sidibe
In our third episode, Price Mellon Graduate Fellow (2018-2019), Orchid Tierney, interviews Katie Rawson (Director of Learning Innovation, Penn Libraries). They review Katie’s journey into the digital humanities, her thoughts on digital tools and resources in pedagogical spaces, and the exciting conceptual possibilities of virtual reality.
In addition to her work at Penn, Katie has published on food in Faulkner's writing, labor in Waffle House, collaboration in the academy, and data curation in the humanities.
Unless otherwise noted, the music used in this episode was sourced from royalty-free music libraries. The artist featured is Blue Dot Sessions.
Intro Music: "Prisoner of Mars" by Stereo Lab
In 2020, Price Lab's week-long digital humanities training institute Dream Lab was canceled due to safety concerns around COVID-19. We created this series of podcasts not as a replacement, but rather to introduce you to some of the people who make Dream Lab such a great experience!
We’re all familiar with tidying up our living spaces, but how can data be tidied up? Matt Lincoln is a research software engineer and Digital Humanities developer at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. His class, Tidy Data focuses on combating data anxiety in the humanities by teaching humanists how to handle complex relationships and uncertainty in data, and format their information tidily so it that can be reshaped to drive databases, websites, analyses, and visualizations.
The music used in this episode was sourced from royalty-free music libraries. The artists featured in this episode are Blue Dot Sessions and Chris Zabriskie.
In today’s episode, Price Lab fellow Julie Napolin interviews scholar, author and “data visionary” Wendy Chun(Canada 150 Chair in New Media, School of Communication at Simon Fraser University). Chun’s current work on digital media draws from her study of Systems Design Engineering and English Literature. She is the author of several books, most recently, Updating to Remain the Same: Habitual New Media, published by MIT in 2016. Chun was a Visiting Scholar at Penn's Center for Media at Risk for the Fall 2018 semester.
Please note, this episode contains a depiction of violence, listener discretion is advised.
Intro music: "Prisoner of Mars" by Stereo Lab
Welcome to the Price Lab Podcast, a series focused on the people who are building, using, and critiquing the digital tools and techniques transforming the humanities. In each episode, friends of the Price Lab will speak to a different scholar about their work and the digital tools and resources shaping their research and pedagogy.
In our first episode, Price Lab Fellow Julie Napolin talks with Jessie Daniels (Prof. of Sociology, Hunter College and The Graduate Center, CUNY) about her research and writing on internet expressions of racism and white supremacy. They also delve into how Daniels approaches teaching sociology by weaving together analog and digital resources.
In addition to her work as a professor and speaker, Daniels has authored five books and is currently working on a memoir project about confronting the extremist racist ideology in her own family. You can read more about Daniels work here: www.jessiedaniels.net/
Intro music: "Prisoner of Mars" by Stereo Lab
In 2020, Price Lab's week-long digital humanities training institute Dream Lab was canceled due to safety concerns around COVID-19. We created this series of podcasts not as a replacement, but rather to introduce you to some of the people who make Dream Lab such a great experience!
CLIR Bollinger Fellow, Jennifer Garcon, joined us to discuss sustainability, tech, community control, and cultivating equity in community partnerships.
The music used in this episode was sourced from royalty-free music libraries. The artists featured in this episode are Blue Dot Sessions, Sidy Maiga, and Poddington Bear.
In 2020, Price Lab's week-long digital humanities training institute Dream Lab was canceled due to safety concerns around COVID-19. We created this series of podcasts not as a replacement, but rather to introduce you to some of the people who make Dream Lab such a great experience!
Programming is notoriously goal-oriented: if there is a problem you work to solve it. Creative coding is different. Rather than look for a solution, creative coding asks, what happens if coding is a tool to explore and play. In this episode, Dr. Mark Sample discusses his approach to creative coding. Hint- it includes twitter bots and Walt Whitman!
This episode was produced and edited by Maria Kiamesso DaSilva with assistance from Sarah Milinski.The music used in this episode was sourced from royalty-free music libraries. The artists featured in this episode are Blue Dot Sessions and Poddington Bear.
In 2020, Price Lab's week-long digital humanities training institute Dream Lab was canceled due to safety concerns around COVID-19. We created this series of podcasts not as a replacement, but rather to introduce you to some of the people who make Dream Lab such a great experience!
How do we integrate DH into the classroom in ways that are substantive, critical, and inclusive? Are there ways to navigate the particular and often messy challenges posed by DH instruction? Nabil Kashyap (Digital Scholarship Librarian at Swarthmore College) and Roberto Vargas (Research Librarian for Humanities & Interdisciplinary Studies at Swarthmore College) joined the Price Lab to discuss their approaches to juggling curriculum, technology, assessment, and available resources — the how’s and why’s of DH pedagogy.
The music used in this episode was sourced from royalty-free music libraries. The artist featured in this episode is Blue Dot Sessions.
In 2020, Price Lab's week-long digital humanities training institute Dream Lab was canceled due to safety concerns around COVID-19. We created this series of podcasts not as a replacement, but rather to introduce you to some of the people who make Dream Lab such a great experience!
Freely available tools and excellent tutorials have made it easier to apply computational text analysis techniques, but researchers may still find themselves struggling to figure out how to harness these methods in their own work. Enderle describes his “conversion” to the digital humanities and how many humanists are closer than they think to being able to incorporate text analysis into their research.
The music used in this episode was sourced from royalty-free music libraries. The artist featured in this episode is Blue Dot Sessions.
In 2020, Price Lab's week-long digital humanities training institute Dream Lab was canceled due to safety concerns around COVID-19. We created this series of podcasts not as a replacement, but rather to introduce you to some of the people who make Dream Lab such a great experience!
Alex Gil, Digital Scholarship Librarian at Columbia University, joined the podcast to talk about minimal computing. An umbrella term, minimal computing is comprised of a broad range of practices that aim to simplify computing to lower costs and provide greater access without relying on institutional resources.
The music used in this episode was sourced from royalty-free music libraries. The artists featured in this episode are Blue Dot Sessions and Chad Crouch.
In 2020, Price Lab's week-long digital humanities training institute Dream Lab was canceled due to safety concerns around COVID-19. We created this series of podcasts not as a replacement, but rather to introduce you to some of the people who make Dream Lab such a great experience!
In the final episode of the Dream Lab series, we're joined by Dr. Clayton Colmon, the Associate Director of Instructional Design for Penn Arts & Sciences Online Learning. He talks about his personal connection to Afrofuturism and its many applications to pedagogy.
The music used in this episode was sourced from royalty-free music libraries. The artists featured in this episode are Blue Dot Sessions, Chris Zabriskie, and Mid-Air-Machine.
In 2020, Price Lab's week-long digital humanities training institute Dream Lab was canceled due to safety concerns around COVID-19. We created this series of podcasts not as a replacement, but rather to introduce you to some of the people who make Dream Lab such a great experience!
Dot Porter, Curator of Digital Research Services in the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies at the University of Pennsylvania joined us to chat about her background as a medievalist, and the considerations of digitization projects as they relate to paid and unpaid labor.
The music used in this episode was sourced from royalty-free music libraries. The artists featured in this episode are Blue Dot Sessions, Chad Crouch, and Guillaume de Machaut.
To kick off the second season of the Price Lab Podcast, we're joined by Sylvester A. Johnson (Director of the Virginia Tech Center for Humanities). Johnson is a nationally recognized humanities scholar specializing in the study of race, technology, and religion. He speaks about his work in the digital humanities and the importance of fostering the humanities in STEM education. The discussion was fascinating and nearly impossible to edit down to our usual episode length, so we are sharing it in two parts.
The music used in this episode was sourced from royalty-free music libraries. The artists featured are Blue Dot Sessions, Chad Crouch, and Poddington Bear.
To kick off the second season of the Price Lab Podcast, we're joined by Sylvester A. Johnson (Director of the Virginia Tech Center for Humanities). Johnson is a nationally recognized humanities scholar specializing in the study of race, technology, and religion. He speaks about his work in the digital humanities and the importance of fostering the humanities in STEM education. The discussion was fascinating and nearly impossible to edit down to our usual episode length, so we are sharing it in two parts.
The music used in this episode was sourced from royalty-free music libraries. The artists featured are Blue Dot Sessions, Chad Crouch, and Poddington Bear.
We opened the Price Lab's podcast vault to release this episode with former Mellon Graduate Fellow, Florian Breitkopf, in conversation with Prof. Hilde De Weerdt (Chinese History, University of Leiden). They discuss Prof. De Weerdt's path to Chinese studies, the presence of the digital humanities in European academia, and how working with digital methodologies can help scholars collaborate across disciplinary, geographical, and oral boundaries.
In this episode, Price Lab's Andrew W. Mellon Research Fellow, Whitney Trettien (Assistant Professor of English, University of Pennsylvania), interviews Kathleen Fitzpatrick (Director of Digital Humanities; Professor of English, Michigan State University).
Fitzpatrick and Trettien discuss the opportunities of digital publishing, as well as the importance of higher education, and the status of optimism in decidedly pessimistic times.
Fitzpatrick is the author of Generous Thinking: A Radical Approach to Saving the University, published by Johns Hopkins University Press in February 2019. She is also the author of Planned Obsolescence: Publishing, Technology, and the Future of the Academy, which was published by NYU Press in November 2011.
Lauren Klein is an Associate Professor at Emory University. Price Lab fellow Nicky Agate joined Lauren over Zoom to talk about Lauren's book, Data Feminism, co-authored with Catherine D’Ignazio. Lauren and Nicky discuss the intersection of feminist thinking and data science, the genesis of data visualization, and how data can be used for social good.
Music by
Blue Dot Sessions
Poddington Bear
In this episode, Thomas Padilla (Director of Information Systems and Technology Strategy, Center for Research Libraries) joins Penn's Dr. Jennifer Garcon to discuss the Collections as Data project, reparative justice practices in DH, and the possibilities and pitfalls of the word community.
Music by
Blue Dot Sessions
Resources
Always Already Computational: Collections as Data
Thomas Padilla, Laurie Allen, Sarah Potvin, Hannah Frost, Elizabeth Russey Roke, Stewart Varner
Collections as Data: Implications for Enclosure
Thomas Padilla
Collections as Data: Part to Whole
Thomas Padilla, Hannah Scates Kettler, Stewart Varner, Yasmeen Shorish
Cohort 1 Team Deliverables
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Responsible Operations: Data Science, Machine Learning, and AI in Libraries, Thomas Padilla
Lauren Tilton is an Assistant Professor of Digital Humanities in the Department of Rhetoric & Communication Studies at the University of Richmond and a Research Fellow in the Digital Scholarship Lab. Her work fits loosely within visual studies but she has introduced many in DH to something she and her frequent collaborator Taylor Arnold call distant viewing; a suite of methods as well as a theoretical framework that uses computers to look for meaningful patterns in image data.
She joined us to discuss her foray into digital humanities work, collaboration in the field, and how DH can respond to the inequities highlighted by COVID-19.